Savage rips 'cowardly' condemnation of Marines in video

'The Taliban are barbarians, they cut people's heads off'

The Defense Department and top Marine Corps brass responding to a video that apparently shows four U.S. Marines urinating on bloodied bodies in Afghanistan should be standing up for brave American warriors instead of kowtowing to radical Islamic lobby groups and Afghan leaders, says talk-radio host Michael Savage.

“What have the Taliban done to our troops? What have the Taliban done to the Afghanis? What are they responsible for in terms of human degradation?” Savage asked his “Savage Nation” listeners last night. “Why is our government punishing our Marines instead of saluting them?”

As military officials investigate the 39-second video, which surfaced amid attempts by Washington to engage in peace talks with the Taliban, U.S. officials already are condemning the Marines.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was said to be “deeply troubled” by the “utterly deplorable” video, telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai and vowed in a statement that those “found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent.”

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – a D.C.-based group tied to a scheme to fund Hamas – faxed a letter to Panetta condemning “this apparent desecration of the dead as a violation of our nation’s military regulations and of international laws of war prohibiting such disgusting and immoral actions.”

Savage noted that CAIR “is the same hate group that overturned a law passed by the majority of people in Oklahoma” to ban consideration of international or Islamic law in the state’s courts.

“Apparently they were distressed that the Marines were not dead and that the Taliban was dead, and they got back at the Marines in any way they could,” Savage said of CAIR’s reaction.

Savage also took aim at the response of “cowardly” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. John Amos, who said in a statement the behavior shown in the video is “wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history” and that the Marine Corps remains “fully committed to upholding the Geneva Convention, the laws of war and our own core values.”

“I think one of your core values, General Amos, would be to be a general who supports your boys who you’ve put in harm’s way while you sit on your fat behind there in North Carolina,” Savage said.

Savage insisted there’s a better way to respond.

“And that is to say,” he suggested, “‘We don’t know what happened, however, we are U.S. Marines first, and we support our boys. Whatever happened in the heat of battle will be looked into. Now go away, and cover Newt Gingrich’s waistline. Leave us alone. Leave it to the military.'”

Savage noted there is little media coverage when Marines are mutilated.

“The Taliban are barbarians; they cut people’s heads off; they kill women and children. But, of course, there is no mention of any of that,” he said.

None other than a Taliban spokesman himself use the term “barbaric,” but it was to describe the scene of Marines urinating on bodies.

“No religion that follows a holy text would accept such conduct,” Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said via text message, according to CNN. “This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world.”

Karzai called on the U.S. government to investigate and issue the harshest punishment possible, calling the “act” by American soldiers “simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms.”

Savage wondered, “If we strip away all of the brave ones, who will be left?”

“What kind of men would have the guts to enlist in the Marine Corps to begin with – to choose to go into combat against these 15th-century throwbacks and to face them eye to eye, man to man, blade to blade, gun to gun, bullet for bullet?” he asked.

“And we’re supposed to expect nice guys like Wolf Blitzer to enlist in the military?” Savage asked, referring to the CNN host.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is the lead investigative agency, CNN reported, citing a U.S. official who said the desecration of a body by U.S. troops could be considered a potential war crime.

Savage summed up for his listeners the fate of the four Marines.

“Should they be given a medal or a court martial in this cowardly new world we live in where the generals throw their boys overboard … to the wolves of the media?”